they've moved people around at my job. purchasing has been moved to banway. the service desk is down on shattuck.

the business and finance team has been moved to my floor.

and, lordy, lordy, they're really smelling up the place. i don't mean a subtle touch of perfume on the neck, a delicate dab on the wrist. no, what i'm smelling wafting from the breakroom to the distribution center appears to have been applied with a leaf blower.

i passed by business and finance the other day and couldn't believe my eyes. a woman spritzed herself in her cube creating a mushroom cloud of perfume rising upward and onward, moving off to rain its smelly fallout across the floor.

isn't this kind of behavior illegal in Berkeley?

later, i walked into the bathroom and caught a whiff. a horrid floral sweet odor like gardenias dipped in caramel then sprinkled with chocolate morsels. a tooth hurting odor. i suspected the heavy applicator from business and finance. so i peeked under the stall. muddy tennis shoes with mis-matched laces -- Bernie from Application Services. not really a perfume sort -- perhaps a little Brut aftershave under the pits, but not this.

When she left, I went about my business, leaving my own devastating bouquet behind, washed my hands, and then saw the source of the stink sitting above the paper towel dispenser (which is always stocked so tightly and you have to tug so hard that the paper towel gets torn into tiny bite-sized pieces -- which is whole 'nother blog.)

there it stood. a tiny glass vase, no bigger than my hand, filled with a honey colored oil with long thin tooth-pick like things soaking in the stuff. I removed one toothpick thingy and ran it under my nose. the scent was as delicate as a sledgehammer and brought back memories of every Motel Six room between here and Fresno trying to pass itself off as non-smoking.

how foul, i said to myself which i am certain is not the response Susie (or any of the other business and finance natural odor haters) probably expected.

my hand twitched to chuck that stinky thing into the waste along with the mounds of damp and shredded paper towels, but i thought no. that would be wrong. people's feelings will get hurt. and the stench will surely soak into the paper towel and spread more easily. best to leave it where it is.

that night while linda was tapping on her new iPhone (the cause of our near breakup, but that too can wait) i said, "business and finance is stinking up the place".

"hmmm," she said which is her standard non-response. she didn't look up. continued tapping with her fingertip. tap. tap.

"really stinks"

tap. tap. tap.

tap.

i have paranoid tendencies, but ever since the iPhone came into the house, i've been feeling a little less interesting. i mean, who can compete with all that?

anyhow, i went on about the stink and such. i may have touched upon my issues with the jammed paper-towel dispenser. and still nothing. tap. tap. tap.

finally, i just said "i'm gonna fucking chuck that thing in the garbage."

of course meaning the perfume dispenser in the 2nd floor toilet. not the iPhone

"do it," she said.

tap. tap. tap.